up next on a second look, we visit the bay area town built by hawaii sugar growers. we show you a disastrous early attempts to fly from the bay area to hawaii and the successful cross pacific flight of two navy men who made it not because they were good pilots but because they were good sailors. plus it is literally the hottest attraction in hawaii, the ever erupting kilowaia volcano. good evening and welcome to a

second look, i'm gasia mikaelian. hawaii and the bay area are two of the most beautiful places in the united states. and you might not have realized how many connections there are in the history of the two places. one of them starts with the sugar industry. this historic film shows the harvesting of sugar in hawaii in the 1940s. in time the growers would form a cooperative called the california and hawaiian sugar refining company or c & h sugar. they opened a refinery in what is now the town of crockett. >> in hawaii, the children grow up with c & h. >> ♪

>> in 2006, crockett celebrated the anniversary of that plant. it still processes all of the cane sugar coming out of hawaii under the c & h brand name. the sugar plant and crockett faced working strikes. >> reporter: crockett nestled along the cardenaa straight, c & h is what it was called. most of the people who lived here worked for c & h. that's back when the plant's work force was 1,500. it's half that now and most workers live elsewhere. c & h has a history of long strikes lasting for months. >> it's expected every three

years and you just have a fund yourself and hopefully you don't use it. >> reporter: the economy of this town of 3,200 is on thin ice too. at this grocery deli store, the owner watches tv. >> i used to hang out for a month, month and a half. i hope things will come up between the period of one month period of time. because i lose 35% of my sales. >> reporter: a cafe has cut back its hours and a store owner watches traffic go by. a sign says support your local merchants but that's hard to do with a working strike. >> i am looking for another location right now. out of town, yes definitely. >> reporter: the strike comes on top of another problem. winds sent fumes from the refinery over the town from time to time. one leak allegedly made hundreds of people sick and

scared others away. real estate doesn't sell, rentals go unrented. and merchants are pulling out. >> it's a bad situation. i mean this used to be a real nice town but we have people moving out and nobody is coming in. >> reporter: eight years later in 2003, ktvu's jim vargas reported on another strike at the c & h refinery in crockett. >> reporter: the strike by 400 members of the sugar workers union has closed the crockett c & h plant. the union contract expired in late may and workers said they went on strike because the company's last offer was full of take aways. >> they don't want to talk about those pensions they sent out. they want us to contribute more toward our medical coverage. and they don't give us any fees on our wages. >> reporter: a worker says c & h must be able to offer more than 8% on a pay increase over three years since the employees

are on a six day workweek. management has no comment. it's not clear how the strike will affect sugar supplies and prices. small business owners say they are already feeling the effects of the strike. todo's bar was empty when we visited, and junior b's wasn't doing much better. >> one day of bad business will hurt. >> reporter: there might be a greater economic impact on the town when more workers lived here. 86-year-old leo sid has lived here all his life. he remembers when the town was a worker town. c & h owned most of the land and most of the people who worked at the plant lived in crockett. >> i don't know if it would hurt the town very much or not i don't know. because most of the employees

live out of town, it's not the way it was before. the hawaii planet started in 1982 and reached its a peak in 1931 producing 100-tons of sugar a year. over the decades foreign competition began to erode sugar's preeminence in the hawaii economy. by the mid-1990s, production had dropped to less than half what it was in 1990. bryan ban miller explained the economic forces behind the decline and behind the decision to stop growing sugar on one hawaii plantation. >> the sugar cane industry faces bitter economic time. these fields will disappear from the hawaii landscape. >> it was taking a lot of money to operate these fields. >> reporter: the sugar company

had become the lifeline of this community for almost a century but that's about to change. >> the price of sugar keeps going up every year. and prices for everything else is off the roof. >> reporter: the price of sugar has hoovered at 36-cents a pound. it costs 22-cents to grow it that plus competition is driving the plantation out of business. these sugar cane plantation i'm standing in will be the last harvest for the company. in 18 months they close their doors for good. does it bother you? >> of course it bothers me, there's 350 employees and this is a business that started in

1897. and it's an old business. it's part of the island, it's sugar and it's very painful to see. >> so it's waiting -- >> reporter: it's also painful for gary, he's one of many local employees recently let go. 31 years with the company. >> 31 years two months. >> reporter: now what? >> i don't know? i have to go look for a job now, that's for sure. >> reporter: and as workers depart at day's end they too must contemplate a future without the sugar company. how a contest to promote flights to hawaii turned into a disaster. and a bit later on how they're skill as sailors helped save a group of aviators trying to fly to hawaii in the 1920s.

75 years ago this summer was the spot for an aviation race. the race was a disaster, here's bob mackenzie's report from 2001. on the morning of august 16, 1927 the eyes of the world were focused on the tiny oakland airport. then located on bay farm island where 15 men and a young woman tuned up their rickety airplane for a flight they hoped would make them rich and famous. the c & h sugar company put together the race and offered a prize. now the pacific was the challenge, but it was one thing

to find europe, all lindburg had to do was keep going east. and another to find the tiny islands of hawaii flying only by a compass and the stars. the fliers were motivated by glory and greed. >> now it must have occurred to the sponsors, the press all the people who should have said, wait a minute, that this could develop into a real catastrophe. why didn't anybody say, wait a minute this is not a good idea. >> there had to be somebody who said it's not a good idea. nobody is going the make it. you have the glory gamblers who were out to prove them wrong. >> reporter: things began to go wrong before the race even

started. the two men lester maitland and hegenberger landed as heros but were not qualified. well then the tragedies began. a plane slammed into the ocean and both pilots died. another pilot stalled an engine and crashed. his wife washed him crash and die. on approaching the oakland field fell into the bay, 100 feet offshore. the plane was totaled, the pilot and navigator were unhurt but out of the race. probably a good thing for them. the public had fallennen in love with the only woman on the

race who owned a little biplane to be sworn by eddy pedler and 30-year-old dilas penoble. bad luck struck one wobbly little plane after the other. the pilots crawled out unhurt but their plane was finished. three other planes took off but were back within minutes with torn fuselages or torn wings. only three planes made it into the sky. the aloha, the willow rock, mr. ran and the golden eagle two of those planes would never be seen again. 26 hours and 17 minutes after taking off, the woller rock landed in hawaii to a welcoming crowd. pilot art gobel and williams david had won the 25,000.

a few hours later the aloha arrived, they would share the $10,000. the pineapple company that got all the publicity and then sph handed out the checks. pretty mildred doran was missing along with his crew. so was the golden eagle. two more fliers took off from oakland vowing to look for the missing planes, they too would never been seen again. in all 10 people were lost. but the dole race was an epic adventure, a cause for celebration. when we come back on a second look, remembering the men who made a historic and fateful flight almost all the way from san francisco bay to hawaii. and a bit later, we visit

hawaii's glowing landmark the kilowae volcano.

the u.s. navy has a long and proud tradition of combat aviation but it was almost not to be. the army wanted sole control of america's military aircraft. it took a group of navy pilots on a seemingly impossible mission to change that and they did it not so much by being good pilots as they did it by being good sailors. >> reporter: the early 1920s, the fleet of amphibious airplanes or flying boats was down to 170 aircrafts. why does the navy need any aircraft at all asked general billy mitchell the renowned hero of world war i and head of

the navy air corp. mitchell wanted to be the head of the navy. when the army made history and headlines by flying around the world in 1924, mitchell's plan looked like a shoe in with congress. like messemer who has told the story. he said the navy's men thought they had to do something similar. >> they decided that a nonstop flight to hawaii where the fleet was based would be suitably spectacular. >> reporter: two navy planes would fly from san francisco to hawaii. the navy chose commander mitchell. >> he was a pilot, not a very good one. but he was an excellent navigator and he was considered

to be the best dead reckoning navigator. >> reporter: what the navy did not tell the press if they were not sure the plane could carry enough fuel to make it to hawaii. >> it fell one hour and a half short requirement to get to hawaii. >> reporter: yet they took off in planes that probably weren't going to get there. >> it gets worse. they had rallied this flight, they could hardly get out of it. they had to take off on the flight. >> reporter: two planes took off from san pablo bay and headed out through the golden gate which of course did not have a bridge in 1925. the third plane had been judged unready for the journey. after 300 miles the second plane had to turn back with a broken fuel line. rogers and his crew of five flew on and hit head winds

instead of the expected tail wind. rogers had what he thought was a fail safe, navy ships were strung out along the course 200 miles across. >> the idea is he would fly down this flight line and they would recognize him, pass him on to the next ship. if he did have to land at sea, he would be able to land next to a ship and refuel and go on. and even if it weren't a nonstop flight, at least they would make it, you see. that was the plan. >> reporter: the plan went wrong when a radio operator on one of the ships miss read his instruments and radioed wrong location information to the airplane. when rogers ran out of gas, he landed where the ship should have been, and when the props stopped turning the airplane could no longer sent a radio signal. hawaii was still 450 miles away. >> they had enough radio power to listen, they could hear the search going on about 200 miles

away from where they were. from that point forward they're on their own as far as we know it. >> reporter: the pn91 had disappeared days went on without a trace of the plane. after a week it seemed likely the plane had gone under everyone if it hasn't its crew could not survive for long on its one day ration of food and water. then nine days after the pn9 went down it made a miraculous appearance a few miles off the coast of hawaii. the six men on board were alive. how in the world had they traveled 450 miles of open ocean in a sea plane that could not fly. the story soon came out. rogers and his crew were all sailors first and pilots second. they had torn up floorboards and fashioned drop keels in short they had sailed the airplane to hawaii.

>> rogers navigation is so good and they're seamen ship is so good they make a perfect land fall in maui harbor. they would have sailed that airplane into the harbor by themselves had the submarine hasn't found them. the story of the airplane that sailed to hawaii made heros of the crew. >> the story itself, the epic was so dramatic and the arrival at maui and the rescuing was so exciting that these guys came home as heros. when we come back on a second look, we visit one of the world's most active volcanos.

hawaii is home to two of

the world's most distinctive volcanos. malaoa is one of the world's largest. kilowea is considered one of the world's active. ktvu's randy chandobil visited. >> reporter: a few adventurous travelers sailed to hawaii and trekked to the summit. >> hawaiians first proposed making kilowea a national park back in 1986 but congress did not seem impressed with the idea. perhaps because many congressmen had never been to hawaii. it took an event on the island. suddenly everyone was curious

about volcanos and congress made both the kilowean a national park. this 26 anniversary is a particularly exciting time to be in the area, as kilowean has been exploding since 1983. tubes are carrying molten rock to the ocean. >> that's the only way it can remain liquid. 2,000degrees. >> it's covered all the way until its gets to the ocean. >> right it's formed its own tube. when it get -- gets a skin over it it goes underneath.

>> reporter: you can sense the 12-foot diameter tubes underneath. steam escapes through cracks in the sheets of black rock. and there are skylights where the lava crusts super heats and collapses into the tubes they are like peepholes into hell. a red hot blur, an underground river of 2,000-degree liquid rock. >> almost immediately after the eruptive phase ends the lava drains from these flow tubes and leaves a hollow shell. we're standing in one of those hollow tubes right now. imagine this whole thing filled with hot lava rushing toward the ocean. >> in reality we look at it as an incredible moment of recreation. >> reporter: creation indeed as lava cools at the island's edge new land. >> reporter: that's it for this week's second look. i'm gasia mikaelian, thank you for watching.